With This Baby...

She’d got it all worked out. She could live upstairs, with a farmhouse kitchen downstairs big enough to do all the catering, and she’d have a huge studio at one end, and the cottage could be the guest accommodation. Then she’d be able to earn money, indulge her creative streak and look after the baby, all at the same time.

Oh, yes. She’d thought it all through—all except how to pay for it, but Patrick Cameron had plenty of money, and giving his baby a future was little enough to ask of him under the circumstances.

And in less than a week she’d see him again, she was sure of it. He couldn’t afford all the mud-slinging the tabloids would get up to, not in his position, so he’d have to co-operate to a certain extent. He couldn’t continue to deny knowing Amy once he’d seen the photographs, and he’d have to start playing ball.

First off was the DNA check, of course, and then there would be no question about it.

It would be interesting to see how he dealt with that, she thought. In so many ways he’d been a real gentleman, but his stubborn refusal to acknowledge his relationship with Amy gave the lie to that. So which was the real Patrick Cameron? Her curiosity was piqued, and she realised with a shock that she was looking forward to seeing him again.

Not that she was interested in him in any personal way—of course not. He’d been Amy’s lover, and that made him strictly off limits. Besides, that dark hair, unruly even though it was short, and those curious green-grey eyes that should have been soft and yet were strangely piercing—they didn’t appeal to her in the least, except academically, because he was Jess’s father.

And that body—not that she’d seen much of it, of course, except in the photos which she’d been reluctant to study in any detail.

Liar!

Claire ignored her honest streak in favour of self-delusion. Much more comfortable, because acknowledging her interest in a man rich enough to buy her out hundreds of times over, a man whose work she respected and admired, a man who, if she allowed herself to be honest for once, was the most attractive man she’d seen in years—actually, make that two and a half decades—acknowledging her interest in him would only underline just how fruitless that interest would be.

She was nobody. Nothing. Just a frustrated interior designer and graphic artist making a tenuous living freelancing at her drawing board, working for anyone who needed her draughtsmanship and visualising skills, with no future, no hope of career advancement, no pension prospects.

She laughed silently. Pension prospects? She was twenty-six—but suddenly, since she’d become responsible for this little scrap, that seemed to matter.

And without Auntie Meg’s unexpectedly generous bequest, they’d be homeless as well.

‘Oh, Auntie Meg, I wish I knew what to do,’ she sighed, staring out of the window at the dark shape of the barn just fifty or so paces away. She could sell it, of course, but that would mean the end of her dream.

Oh, well. Maybe Patrick Cameron would prove himself to be a guardian angel in disguise. She could only wait and hope.

Patrick looked at the letter from the DNA lab that had performed the last paternity test for him a year ago—a test that had proved unnecessary, because the woman had broken down in the end and confessed she’d just wanted to get some money.

Nevertheless, the test had been done, and, in case it should happen again, the lab had agreed to keep his profile on record, the details of the individual bar-code that identified each and every one of his cells as his and his alone.

He sighed. Until last year, he couldn’t have said that, but now Will was gone.

His clone, Will used to joke, but last year he’d been serious. It had been just before he’d gone away, and he’d said, very quietly and with some considerable dignity, that it was time to move on and stop living in his brother’s shadow.

‘It’s as if I’m a clone of you, and they left some vital nutrient out of the Petri dish—that extra je ne sais quoi. Still, without you standing beside me, who would ever know? And not even you, dear bro, casts a shadow long enough to reach Australia.’

And his smile had been wry and sad, and Patrick had hugged him hard.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ he’d said, choked, but Will had meant every word of it. He’d gone to Australia, bent on making himself a new life, and two weeks later he’d been dead, drowned in a stupid accident with a surfboard.

And now it seemed he might have had a child.

Patrick dragged in a deep breath and filed the information in its envelope, then tucked it into his jacket pocket. The car—the psychedelic 2CV—was sitting in the underground car park beneath the building, and it was time to go.

As he strapped Dog into his harness and fastened him to the front seat belt, he wondered if the car would make it. By the time he reached the M11, he was almost certain that it wouldn’t. Despite its service, it ran like a pig, it was hideously noisy and uncomfortable, not to mention terrifyingly vulnerable amongst the heavy lorries, and he decided the truck driver who’d winched it away had had excellent judgement.

Paying her fine was just doing the decent thing. Bothering to have the damn car serviced and valeted and returning it to her, on the other hand, seemed a ludicrous waste of money, because he was convinced it was destined for the crusher.

Still, maybe she’d be grateful. She’d seemed sorry enough to see it go—though why he wanted her gratitude he couldn’t begin to imagine. He certainly wasn’t sure he wanted it enough to risk his life in this bit of pink tin foil she called a car!

On second thoughts, tin foil might be better—it didn’t rust. This clapped-out old heap might be a classic, but it must be thirty years old if it was a day, and it was well and truly past its sell-by date. Hell, it was at least as old as him, and considerably older than Claire Franklin.

Claire.

He rolled it round his tongue, savouring the shape of the word, remembering her eyes, her mouth, that soft, lush figure, the delicate fragrance that had still been lingering in the air when he’d gone back up to his apartment with Dog at the end of the day.

Was it really only two days ago? It seemed like a lifetime.

He could feel the little bulge of the pink rabbit in his pocket, and he wondered if the baby had missed it. Jess, she was called. Jessica? Jessamy? Jessamine?

The realisation that he was looking forward to seeing her again shocked him. He hated babies! Smelly, leaky little things—but this one could be Will’s, his last gift to the world, and for that reason alone he wanted to see her again.

The fact that she came with a rather attractive young aunt attached was nothing at all to do with it!

CHAPTER TWO

CLAIRE heard the car coming long before it pulled upon her drive.

Of course, if things had been going right, she wouldn’t have heard it at all, but she’d hit something in the long grass in the meadow behind the barn and the cutting deck on the little tractor mower had collapsed, and so it was silenced.

Silenced and broken, yet another thing in her life that was going wrong.

Hot and cross from struggling about underneath the mower to try and see what had happened, she rolled over and stared up—and up. Up endlessly long legs clad in immaculately cut trousers, up past a sand-washed silk shirt in a lovely soft green-grey the colour of his eyes, up to a face she hadn’t expected to see again quite so soon.

Great. Just when she was looking her dignified best!

‘Mr Cameron.’

‘Ms Franklin.’

She scrambled to her feet, taking advantage of his outstretched hand to haul herself up, and gave her back a cursory swipe to dislodge some of the chopped grass that was no doubt sticking to it like confetti.

There on her drive again, like a bad penny, was Amy’s car come back to haunt her—and haunt Patrick Cameron, if the look on his face was anything to go by. Oops. He didn’t look as if he’d enjoyed his journey.

‘Where’s the baby?’ he asked without preamble, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck bristle. Just like the dog’s—only the useless thing was sleeping inside with Jess, and ignoring her duty with not a bristle in sight.

‘She’s asleep. Why?’

He shrugged, but there was nothing casual about his incisive tone. ‘Just wondered. I mean, you’re out here—who’s looking after her?’

‘I am,’ she retorted, the irritation spreading from the back of her neck to permeate her voice. ‘I’m hardly far away. Do you have a problem with that?’

‘I just expected you to be right beside her, within earshot.’

‘I am right beside her. She’s in the house, about thirty yards away, and the dog’s with her.’

Or she had been until that moment. Pepper, belatedly cottoning on to the arrival of their visitor, came barrelling out of the back door, barking furiously.

‘It’s OK, Pepper,’ she said, and the lurcher skidded to a halt, lifted her head and then ran to the car, jumping up and scrabbling at the door.

‘Ah. Dog,’ he said, and Claire felt her eyebrows shoot up.

‘Dog?’

He gave a slight, humourless smile. ‘In the car. My dog. Well, my brother’s dog, actually. It was as far as we ever got with naming him. Will Pepper be OK if I let him out?’

‘She’ll be fine, she loves other dogs. She’s too trusting. Is he OK, though? I don’t need a vet bill.’ To add to all the other bills on her list.

‘He’s fine. We meet other dogs in the park all the time.’

He went over to the car and released the dog called Dog, and he and Pepper sniffed round each other and wagged cautiously.

Claire, used to Pepper with her shaggy blonde coat and little neat ears, stared at Dog in amazement. Black, with a white splash on his chest, and smaller than Pepper, he had the biggest ears she’d ever seen except on a German shepherd, and his body couldn’t seem to decide if it was terrier, Labrador or collie.

Pepper didn’t seem to care, however. She was just enjoying the attention and his lineage was obviously the last thing on her mind.

‘So much more direct than people,’ his owner said, watching them circle with their noses up each other’s bottoms, and she laughed, surprised by the dry flash of humour.

‘I think I’ll settle for being human.’

His smile was slow and lazy, and crinkled his eyes. It crinkled her stomach, too, and she felt as if she’d been punched by the force of that latent sexual charm. Good grief! No wonder Amy had fallen for him.

Amy. That’s what this was all about, she reminded herself before she could get totally sidetracked by his charm. Amy.

She brushed her hands together and looked up at him again. ‘Um—you brought the car. Thank you. What do I owe you?’

‘Owe me?’ he said, sounding surprised. ‘You don’t owe me anything. I had to get here somehow.’

‘And getting that heap out of the pound and driving here in it was your preferred choice of transport? Give me a break!’

He chuckled softly. ‘OK. I’ll admit I’m glad I don’t have to drive it back, but it made it, which I have to say surprised me.’

It surprised Claire, too, but she wasn’t telling him that! It would no doubt collapse on her the very next time she took it out—just like the mower and the strimmer and everything else.

‘Having problems?’ he asked, jerking his head towards the mower, and she rolled her eyes and sighed.

‘You don’t want to know. I hit something, and the cutting deck’s dangling now. Goodness knows what I’ve broken. I’ll get John to look at it.’

‘John?’

‘A mechanic-cum-miracle-worker. He keeps my bits and pieces going.’ When I can afford to pay him, she added to herself silently. ‘By the way, George wouldn’t take any money from me on Monday for bringing me back, so I owe you for that, too, and the cash you gave me.’

He shrugged. ‘I’ll let you pay it back in kind. I didn’t dare stop the car in case it wouldn’t start again, and it’s been a long morning. I reckon a cup of coffee should settle the score.’

‘That’s a very expensive cup of coffee,’ she told him, ‘and anyway, you’re in luck because I haven’t got any. I’ve only got tea, but no milk, so you’ll have to let me pay you back.’

‘Tea will be fine,’ he said, cutting her off. ‘Shall we?’

He held out a hand, gesturing for her to lead the way, and with a shrug of defeat she took him into the house through the boot room—as untidy and scruffy as ever—and through to the kitchen, where Jess was beginning to stir in the pram. ‘Have a seat,’ she said, pushing the cat off the only decent chair, and he sat and looked around curiously.

‘What a lovely kitchen,’ he said, and she nearly choked. It was ancient, the cupboards were all chipped and scratched, and it needed a match taking to it—or at the very least a bucket of hot, soapy water followed by a paintbrush.

‘I thought you were an architect,’ she said with a thread of sarcasm, and he chuckled that lovely, deep, sexy chuckle again.

‘I am. I spend my life specifying high-tech glass and stainless-steel kitchens, somewhere between an operating theatre and the control room of a spacecraft, and you daren’t touch them for fear of leaving a fingerprint. You could come in here with a muddy dog and feel at home—it reminds me of my childhood, visiting my grandmother. Homely. Restful. Soothing.’

She looked around her and saw it with his eyes—saw the old black Aga that she couldn’t afford to run, and the deep butler’s sink with its mahogany draining board, the painted solid timber cupboards—all the things that everyone wanted, by all accounts, only new, of course, and made to look old. Distressed. Claire nearly laughed aloud. It was certainly distressed!

Still, the blue and white Cornishware china on the dresser shelves was highly collectable now, and the brightly coloured mugs hanging on the hooks above the kettle brought a vivid splash of colour to the room. And through the gap in the hedge opposite the kitchen window, you could see across the meadow and right down the valley to the church in the distance.

Yes, it had charm, and she loved it—which was just as well, because she was no more likely to be able to fly than refit it. She’d been working her way steadily through the house until Amy had died and she’d had to give up her job. Now there was a huge list of essentials ahead of the kitchen, and the mower was tacked right onto the top as of today. Really, April was not a good time for the darned thing to fall apart.

‘How strong do you like your tea?’ she asked, dropping a teabag in a mug and pouring on the water.

‘Not very. Have you got lemon? No, forget it.’

She snorted. ‘I don’t have it anyway. I’m sorry, you’re not getting a very good return on your investment here, are you?’

‘That’s not why I’m here.’

No, it wasn’t. He was here because she’d given him very little choice, and all these smiling pleasantries were just exactly that. Any second now, she guessed, the gloves would be off.

She fished the teabag out of his mug, dunked it up and down in her own and wished, for the hundredth time that day, that she’d got milk. She’d tried some of Jess’s formula in it, but it hadn’t been the same, and, anyway, she was running out of that, too.

She turned to face him, mugs in hand. ‘So, where do you want to start?’ she asked, taking the bull by the horns.

‘I’d like to see those photographs.’

‘Ah.’

She set the mugs down in front of him and turned away. She hated looking at the photos. They weren’t sordid, thank God, but they were intimate—hugely intimate, emotionally revealing. Things no one should see except the participants—things Amy should have taken with her to the grave, locked up in her heart.

Still, he’d been there, so it hardly mattered if he saw them, did it? She didn’t have to look again and upset herself with the painful images of her sister with this undeniably attractive man.

She went to the study and pulled out the packet of photos from the bottom drawer, and gave them to him.

‘Here.’

He took them, opened the envelope and eased them out, a strange expression on his face. Cradling her tea, she watched him as he sifted through them slowly, over and over again.

Then, without a word, he put them away in the envelope and looked up at her, his eyes curiously sad.

‘You’d better sit down,’ he said, and she sat, wondering what it was that had put that look on his face. Had he loved Amy? Was that it?

It wasn’t, and if she’d had a lifetime, she couldn’t have guessed what was coming next.

‘The man in those photographs isn’t me,’ he said. ‘It’s my twin brother.’

She stared at him blankly, then laughed. ‘Oh, very good. How clever—except, of course, that Amy called you Patrick. And now you’re going to tell me he was also called Patrick?’

Patrick—this one—shook his head. ‘His name was Will. He sometimes used to pretend to be me—a sort of prank we used to play as kids, except he apparently never grew out of it. He died a year ago, in Australia.’

‘Died?’ she echoed, and her hopes crumbled to dust. There was no way he’d pay for his brother’s child, and so she’d have to sell their home and move, or at least sell the barn, and Amy’s debts would eat up so much of that.

‘Tell me—what date were these taken?’

‘It’s on the back of the envelope,’ she said woodenly. ‘March, I believe.’

He turned the packet over, and nodded. ‘That fits. I wondered if it would. I was away—in Japan, on a contract. Will was using my flat for a week—and apparently masquerading as me. It must have been then. So, tell me, when was the baby born?’

‘Two weeks before Christmas.’

He nodded, then he turned his head slightly and studied Jess in the pram.

‘She doesn’t look like him.’

‘She’s very like Amy.’

He nodded again, and let out a quiet sigh. ‘I wish she’d looked more like him—a sort of reminder. That would have been nice.’

‘You could always look in the mirror,’ she said, and his mouth kicked up in a sad smile.

‘Not quite the same. Still.’

He stood up. ‘I’ve got something for you—I’ll just get my jacket,’ he said, and went out to the car.

She followed him, propping herself up in the doorway and watching as his long legs ate up the path. The dogs were playing now, having a tug of war with one of Pepper’s knotted bones, and he paused to ruffle their coats.

They wagged at him and carried on, growling and pretending to be fierce, and after one last pat he straightened up, pulled open her car door and reached in for his jacket.

As he closed the door, it bounced open again, as she’d known it would.

‘It does that,’ she told him, going over to yank the handle and bang the door. ‘It’s a knack you have to acquire.’

He flinched and muttered something along the lines of not in this lifetime, and she stifled a laugh. Poor baby, he’d really had to slum it! Oh, well, it would do him good—let him see what she was up against. She could do with all the sympathy she could get, the way things were panning out.

They walked back to the house, past the broken little tractor with its drooping cutting deck, past the barn with its door hanging half-open on rusty hinges to reveal the strimmer that had gone on strike over the winter and steadfastly refused to start.

She wondered what else could go wrong, and decided she didn’t want to think about it. She had more than enough to think about—like the fact that it seemed he wasn’t Jess’s father after all, although proving it could be tricky, because, of course, the DNA would match if he and his brother were identical twins. If that really was his brother in the photos and not him, then they were like two peas in a pod.

And, of course, because of that it would be the easiest thing in the world for him to pass off his child as his brother’s, now that Will and Amy weren’t there to argue the case. It would absolve him of all responsibility. How convenient.

And yet he didn’t seem dishonest.

She gave a silent snort. Like she was such a good judge of character! She’d let Amy hoodwink her for years, bleeding her dry in one way and another and now leaving her with Jess to bring up, safe in the knowledge that, of course, she, Claire, the sensible one, would do the right thing.

So he could be a liar and a smooth talker, quite easily, and how on earth would she know?

Oh, rats. It was too confusing, too involved, too difficult to deal with. She didn’t want to doubt him, but now it was there in the back of her consciousness, this insidious little doubt, niggling away and destroying her peace of mind.

Not that she had much of that these days.

‘Here,’ he said, pulling an envelope out of his jacket pocket and handing it to her as they went back into the kitchen. She eyed it warily.

A letter from a solicitor threatening her with legal action if she revealed the photos? A cheque—no, she didn’t get that lucky.

‘It’s the information about the DNA lab,’ he told her, putting her out of her suspense and puncturing the last little bubble of hope. ‘They’ve got my profile on record. The instructions are all in there. You just have to take the baby to the GP for a cheek swab, and get it sent off to them with the enclosed covering letter and the cheque that’s in there, and then they run the test. It should match if she’s Will’s daughter—and that’s definitely Will in the photos.’

‘How do I know that?’ she asked.

His brow pleated. ‘How do you know? Because we’re identical.’

‘Exactly. So how do I know it isn’t you?’

He stared at her, clearly taken aback. ‘Me? I’ve told you, I was out of the country.’

‘I’ve only got your word for that.’

‘It’s usually good enough,’ he said drily, and if she hadn’t known better, she would have said he sounded hurt. Then he went on, ‘Anyway, it’s easy. Apart from the passport stamps and minutes of the meetings I attended in Japan, I haven’t had my appendix out—unlike Will. And there’s a scar in the photos.’

And before she had a chance to say anything, before she could challenge him or express her scepticism, he tugged his shirt out of his trousers, hitched a thumb in the waistband and pushed it down, revealing a taut, board-flat abdomen without so much as a crease in it. ‘See? No scar.’

Her shoulders dropped. Well, at least she knew he was telling the truth. There was no way a surgeon’s knife had ever scored that skin. She dragged her eyes away from the line of dark hair that arrowed down under that dangerously low waistband, and looked back up at him.

‘OK, so it isn’t you in the photos,’ she agreed.

‘No—but it might as well be,’ he said quietly. ‘If the baby is Will’s, then she’d be as closely related to me as she would be if she were my own, and I would feel the same obligation towards her. I never thought I would, but it seems blood is thicker than water, after all, and if she’s Will’s child, then in his absence she’s mine, and I’ll do what’s right by her.’

He ground to a halt, the long speech seeming to open up more than he’d intended to reveal, and he firmed his lips together and looked away—at Jess, awake now and waving her arms and legs happily in the pram.

‘You don’t have to explain that to me,’ she reminded him. ‘Why do you think I’m looking after Jess instead of handing her over to Social Services for adoption?’

He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, of course you understand. You’re in the same boat. Lord, what a coil.’

His jacket was hanging over the back of his chair, and she could just see one pink ear sticking up against the rumpled grey-green linen.

She inclined her head towards it and smiled, deliberately lightening the tone. ‘So, Mr Cameron—is that a rabbit in your pocket, or are you pleased to see me?’

For a second of startled silence she wondered if she’d gone too far, but then he gave a soft huff of laughter and pulled it out.

‘I’d forgotten all about it. I found it in the lift. I didn’t know if she’d miss it—if she was old enough yet to have fixated on it. I gather babies can be funny like that.’